


no wedding and four funerals

by okayantigone



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, F/M, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Wakes & Funerals, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:54:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22440670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayantigone/pseuds/okayantigone
Summary: after everything is said and done, the galaxy sets about rebuilding.... again.newly appointed general poe dameron has to honor the heroes of the resistance, while rey goes on a rather more personal journey through the galaxy, trying to make peace with her grief, and let it go, like a true jedi. (naturally, she fails)aka 4 funerals that happened, and one wedding ceremony that didn't
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey
Comments: 10
Kudos: 34





	no wedding and four funerals

0.  
it’s like this: the war is over as soon as it has started, and they must take stock of the victims, and divine the wreckage. the bodies dug out of the broken and bent metal of crashes ships to be lined up, identified, buried. 

hundreds of storm troopers only knowable by number tags make up the funeral pyres, as poe, newly crowned general of the resistance takes stock of the ruins of exogol. a new republican bureaucracy, still in its infancy, is emerging, but they are light years away, and poe and the resistance and here and now, and there are so many dead who will never make it home. 

there are so many of the living for whom there is no home anymore. 

i. leia and luke

in the end, they are honored by the new-new republic on naboo. there’s no other place that so clearly marries the tradition of the empire, with all its flawed grandstanding, with the hope and peace the new and new new republic had always favored. 

poe is in full military garb, which is uncomfortable, and he distinctly does not want. he leads the procession. the whole thing is ridiculously unnecessary and over the top, but he keeps his face to a grim neutrality as the holoprojectors turn on him. rose and finn are at his side, and behind him march the surviving resistance generals. 

the procession is long, and the bystanders – many, but a deafening silence echoes in the air around them. there’s no bodies to bury, because force users leave nothing behind. just the emptiness, where there once was a person. it’s ridiculous to think the senate would spend so much on a lavish funeral procession, when there’s nothing to bury, but he ascends the steps to the queen’s residence, turns to face the crows, and hates them all for their grief, when they hadn’t even known leia, when none of them had met her, when none of them had answered the distress call on crait, and some of them – likely most of them – had cowered in the dubiour protection of the empire’s shadow. 

he thinks about rey, on tattooine, laying cloth-wrapped lightsabers beneath the warmth of the sand, putting to rest the only family she’d ever known. he salutes the empty caskets. in the crows, someone wails. 

ii. ben 

it’s the second day of the ridiculous charade on naboo, and it does not go much easier than the first. 

ben solo, celebrated as a hero of the reistance. he, who stood from his exile and cut down the vile sith kylo ren, and ended palpatine once and for all. there is no body, of course. instead, his handsome visage has been carved out of grey marble. he looks peaceful, almost asleep, in calm repose, arms crossed over his chest, his eyes closed. the artist has evened out the scar poe knows should be bisecting his face, so he is perfect and unblemished. his body is lined with white flowers. someone has had the brilliant idea that ben’s funeral should mirror that of his illustrious grandmother, after her death at the hands of darth vader. 

it’s a cruel joke, but ben still looks beautiful, every inch the prince. he’ll be forever remembered as a hero now, as a jedi who fell in the fight for the greater good, and fuck history and truth. like everyone who forgets that anakin skywalker is darth vader, so they will forget that kylo ren is ben solo, and who’s left alive to tell them otherwise? luke and leia’s honors have both passed, and now kylo will be laid to rest in a beautiful tomb on naboo, to end the blood-splattered history of his family. 

poe takes a moment, then, to love him again, just for a second. lets himself remember him as he was, in a summer that bloomed with yellow flowers, and neither of them knew the name snoke. he had loved him then, quietly, ardently, with an ache in the hollows of his chest that never healed. the ben solo he’d loved had died at the hands of the monster kylo ren, and poe had hated him. and he’d found out the truth, and hated him still, and hated leia too, for the lie. 

the last time they saw each other, the prince he’d loved had been nothing but a snarling, terrifying creature in a mask, and when he’d cracked poe’s mind open, poe had known nothing, but pain. 

he reads out an eulogy. he hates every single politician aristocracy type person who thought this would be appropriate. it’s even worse, he thinks. than what they had planned for luke and leia, because at least he knows they’re getting a real burial – a real honoring, by someone who truly knew and understood them. he thinks again of rey, on tattooine, amid dunes of brilliantly golden sand, looking out at the twin suns setting behind the dunes. 

even vader had had a funeral – a pyre on endor, and his children watching the flames rising. a part of him thinks, now that he’s an adult himself, a commander himself, maybe luke and leia never really got to grow up from child soldiers, forever setting fire to their father’s funeral pyre. they’d won the war, and it had never left them, and it had quietly and savagely taken their son. 

kylo ren will melt into the shadows he came from, and his name will be forgotten, like snoke’s. 

all ben solo will ever get is this. 

poe reads his eulogy, and makes it good. 

iii. hux

arkanis is a cold and miserable piece of shit planet, is poe’s first thought. bitter rain mists in the blue air. slabs of grey concrete make the majority of the city, whose former imperial glory has faded and rusted with the years of austerity wrought by being on the wrong side of the first order trade route blockades. or the right side, depending on how one views it. 

he’s here of his own volition, because there’s no one else who wanted to do this. finn had suggested he go, but the twist of his mouth, and the way he looked somewhere over poe’s left shoulder made it obvious he was offering because he thought he had to, and poe was not unkind. 

armitage brendol hux had died as a hero of the rebellion. he’s still not quite sure what to make of that knowledge. finn tells him, quietly, about their hushed conversation before the escape pod. about hux’s quietly steeled determination. 

“he knew he was going to die,” finn says, simply. he too, like hux had been a product of the programming. but when the time to fire had come, hux had not balked, had stood, firm and unmoving, and wiped out millions, and watched the light fade from the horizon with pale unblinking eyes. 

“he could have come with us,” poe says, and does not mean it. they could not have saved hux. they certainly hadn’t wanted to. 

instead, he delivers his body to his home world. the hux mansion stands, like grand old houses stand, quiet and intimidating. poe wants to imagine the kind of childhood that makes a man ready to tear down the galaxy to prove his own power, and comes up empty. 

the automated stretcher whirrs quietly behind him, hux’s simple black coffin on it. the wood is polished and gleaming perfectly. one of the garden workers points him to the tool shed and poe gets a shovel. then he points him to the family cemetery. the worker does not offer to dig. the hux estate pays out monthly for the house and gardens’ upkeep, though it is poe’s understanding that armitage had left for the cadet academy, some twenty years ago, and never returned. even so, the worker says, as long as the money keeps coming, they’ll keep the estate in order. after that – who knows. 

the rain makes the ground soft. the brown earth looks hyper-realistic, as he turns it over. the grass is so green and lush it hurts his eyes. 

he wonders if there would be another place, more suitable than this. after all, hux hadn’t come back here of his own volition, not even once, after leaving. maybe he’d wanted something else entirely, for himself. for after. 

poe knows what hux would have wanted. to sit on a throne, with the galaxy at his feet, a thousand suns dead on his orders, a thousand more ready to die. 

armitage brendol hux  
0 aby-35aby  
general of the first order  
hero of the galactic resistence  
starkiller  
iv. kylo 

returning to exogol the second time around is no less harrowing and impossible, but rey does it because she has to. she likes when things have an end, tying neatly up everything in one finish. it’s clearer that way, and when things are ended, definitively, no one is left waiting. 

this is how the story of rey palpatine ends. she had waited, and waited, and waited, and the resolution, though messy and untidy, had presented itself, and now that she knows, she can finally rest. this is how the story of kylo ren ends, too. the sith apprentice who rose against his masters at long last, who freed himself – he’d gone out quietly, in her arms. 

she’d held that ending. a part of her, she thinks, will never not hold it. 

she makes her way down, and the statues of the old sith lords – the ones still intact – look down on her as she does, and she hates them, just a little bit. strong in the force, the hundreds of them, and the apprentice ren had begged for guidance, and not one of them had bothered to come to him. 

you’re not with me, she thinks again. what is the point of a thousand generations, if you stand alone, in the end? 

she walks into the arena. it’s half collapsed. she’d have to come back again, maybe with supplies, and clean this place up, because it’s history, like anch-to is history. it’s her history. 

she knows, with the force at her side, she could restore it for no particular reason, than because she can. she is tired of breaking things apart and taking. what if she can fix something for a change. she hadn’t fixed kylo, though in truth, she hadn’t wanted to. hadn’t tried. kylo ren was not hers to fix, because she hadn’t broken him in the first place. she had loved him too, but she knew, better than most, that just loving someone was rarely if ever enough. because she was loved – she knew that now. she’d been loved by her parents, and she was loved by han and leia, and chewie and maybe even luke, and definitely by finn and poe, and rose. and all those people had once known ben solo and loved him too. not enough to save him, of course. not enough to fix her, now. 

she crosses the arena to the throne. just for a moment, as she looks at it, she feels so, so unbearably small. she remembers being small – a bird-boned skinny thing, half-starved, nearly feral in the jakku desert, dreaming of being something or someone important one day. maybe, if palpatine had not been so late finding her, she’d have sat here, gladly, her eyes golden, and that snarling, dangerous woman from her vision would have brought down lightning and made it rain fire in the galaxy. 

she places kylo’s helmet on the throne instead, and doesn’t even think of trying the seat on for size. she lays his saber on it too, next to the helmet. a cracked kyber crystal, crimson red. a dangerous, violent thing, like kylo himself. she’d returned to the death star, and called it from the sea, ant it had come to her. 

kylo hadn’t wanted an unbroken crystal. he was not unbroken. 

sith burial rites are simple. she’t not sure how accurate their description in the jedi texts is, but there are no sith texts she can consult, so it will have to do. normally, she wouldn’t have to be alone. there would be crowds, come to pay respects. there would be a procession – with the body, and the riches of the sith lord, and his comrades. her silent walk through the wreckage will have to do. she’d picked her way carefully through the fallen ships. the smoke from the funeral pyres is still think in the air. she’d walked slowly, and felt a hundred thousand war dead making way for her, as she cradled his helmet to her chest. 

there’s no sith lord to preside the ceremony, so she’ll have to do, with her palpatine blood, and her prospensity for the dark side, with her grief, and fear and anger that she’ll never ever let go of. she thinks of the warmth of kylo’s hand, that she never took. in another world, maybe. 

she is alone, and she speakd to no one. 

“i am rey skywalker, granddaughter of darth sidious, apprentice of jedi master luke skywaker, come to give final farewell to the dark lord of the sith, named darth ametor by his masters, and kylo ren by himself, apprenticed under luke skywalker, the dark lord snoke, and the sith lord dark sidious. lord ren rose up, and in the sith tradition, killed his masters. in the sith tradition, he died in battle, and is now one with the force.” 

she speaks calmly, projects her voice, looks into the empty ruin of the arena. in the old days, a sith may have been buried with his slaves, the tomb sealed behind them, letting them starve and accompany their master.  
like all other things though, kylo will have to do this alone. she wonders if, in the tradition of her family, blood and chosen both, she has become someone who chooses to abandon the child, rather than save it. 

she walks out, and makes familiar way to her shuttle. a thousand generations are silent behind her. 

+i. the wedding

rey stops to refuel in a shitty tiny planet in a system of shitty tiny planets, who’ve remained untouched by the war, on account of how tiny and shitty they are. she leaves her shuttle to get serviced, and walks into the settlement to stretch her legs. aliens in bright clothes greet her in broken basic. 

they don’t get many strangers here, but she’s very welcome, and is she from far away? does she know anything about those big sky fights that happened, what’s rocking the galaxy so much? the news is sporadic, they don’t really get a lot of frequencies here, and would she like to try the local street food? 

she would. she does. she sits at a table that’s been repurposed from some kind of durasteel container, set outside in the closest thing she’s ever seen to a town square, and is served what she’s reassured is the closest thing to blood soup you can get these days. it’s so obscenely appropriate that she curses out the force in her head, but she drinks from the wooden bowl, and looks out into the square.

she wonders if ben, who so dearly loved tradition, would have insisted blood soup be served at their wedding. she wonders if he’d have insisted they follow sith tradition, as much as such tradition exists. certainly, there are a lot more sith weddings on record, than jedi ones. 

he’d have repurposed his vows from legends. he’d have read from the words revan spoke to bastila when the galaxy was young. her grandfather would walk her towards him. she’d wear all red. or maybe, she’d wear his grandmother’s wedding dress, and wedding paints – out of style and fashion, but so, so important. he’d be in his armour, and he’d remove his helmet for the kiss. naturally, her grandfather would be the one presiding, and he’d prounece them man and wife, a dyad in the force, etcetera, etcetera. then there’d be dancing. he’d take her in his arms, and she’d feel so small against him, with his hands on her waist, and he’d look down at her, and smile, the same way he smiled the first and only time she ever kissed him, with such ardent, desperate relied, as though somehow she’d fixed everything that was wrong with him the way no one else ever had. 

they’d dance into the night, and then get on his ship, and go somewhere far away, with grass and trees. maybe to naboo, where so long ago his grandfather had loved a princess, the same way she herself had fallen in love with a prince. 

they’d be together, always, hand in hand, a skywalker and a palpatine, with the galaxy theirs for the take, but al they’d take is each other. 

at their wedding, he’d stand alone, with general hux as his best men, dressed sternly in their perfectly polished uniforms. she’d have no one on her side, but her grandfather, maybe some old imperial generals. phasma, who’d perhaps stand with her out of kindness. she’d dance with each of his knights. 

she’d dance with her grandfather too, and he’ll tell her, quietly, how to best poison her new husband if he is unkind to her. 

“i’m sorry you had to wait so long,” he’d say, and she’d shake her head. it doesn’t matter. part of the journey is the end, and hers ends like this, in kylo ren’s arms. 

she realizes she’d crying into her blood soup. 

there’s no wedding banquet, and elaborate confectionaries. perhaps this too, makes them rather like anakin and padme. an unwitnessed secret, and the desperation he’d poured into that kiss, and she’d known, finally, what it felt like for someone to come back for her.


End file.
